Brunch hangout: Loysel's Toy Cafe in 66 Kampong Bugis Singapore

July 31, 2011

Went to the really secluded Loysel's Toy cafe by Papa Palheta today for brunch/lunch. It has been on our radar for quite some time, and we finally nailed down a time to drive down. It is not exactly that easy to find if you are not familiar with the area, so I suggest some sleuthing on gothere.sg or google maps before the visit! The guys from Papa Palheta seem to have a knack for finding the kookiest places to open at (which is a good thing)!

The cafe seemed to be nestled in some sort of an industrial building or music school? When we arrived at 1.30pm, business was bustling. Tonnes of 'hip' people having coffees and lunch. Like a friend who commented when she saw I was there (via instagram), she mentioned that she felt like she had to dress up to be there because the atmosphere was not exactly really chillax! That I must agree. It had quite a 'dempsey' feel to it.

We had a seat al fresco since the inside area is really really minute. People are sitting all around the center of the cafe/kitchen actually. It was also a really windy and sunny day. Perhaps too windy.

Inside the air conditioned place, it was bustling. They are quite well-staffed though so that is no problem.

Really liked the coffee things they have inside! There's a huge coffee machine.

There's also a drip coffee apparatus on the counter. I have to call it an apparatus.

They also were selling reusuble cups, and also lovely cakes! I so wanted to order them, but I wanted lunch food, not tea food! Their lemon tart (not pictured here) looked quite popular.

I had a really difficult time choosing my food from the menu because they simply don't really sell much of them. The brunch only consisted of muesli+yogurt/scrambled eggs on toast/bruschetta. Then they have sandwiches (beef, chicken, ham) and 2 types of salads. That plus their cakes and muffins complete the menu. Can't exactly complain though since this is more of a cafe place for the coffee, than a brunch or lunch place for the food. The food was also not quite economical. It's about 9-11 bucks for a food item, but hey we kinda expect that kind of prices anyway.

Wanted scrambled eggs, but they were out! My friend wanted chicken sandwich, which they were also out of. Of all things on the menu, only those 2 were out! Dang. I took a ham sandwich and my friend took the beef sandwich instead.

They came really surprisingly quick too. However, our coffees took about 3x the time to arrive, which is slightly annoying because I usually like to to wet my palate with some drinks before starting on food.

That aside, it was generally a good meal even though we were seated at a odd round table that was not really meant for eating on. The bread was quite enjoyable and not tough/dry/chewy as typical of sourdough bread that is not fresh. The ham was also coated with cheese, some mustard seeds and apple slices. That made it a really interesting and delicious combination actually! For an unassuming looking sandwich, it outperformed itself.

For the coffee, I am really not a connoisseur at all! Therefore I thought my iced latte was really nice because all iced lattes taste more or less the same to me (except Mccafe's, which even I can tell is crap).

But to my friend, who is the purist type that only drinks long black, bitter and pure and all that, the coffee at Loysel's Toy was good. So that must be it.

All in all, another interesting cafe to add to my ever growing list of homegrown coffee places! What about you, what is YOUR favorite place to get good coffee?

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comments

Sorry don't wanna be negative, but quite a few thigs wrong with this report:1. The "huge coffee machine" is in fact a coffee roaster, not a coffee maker.2. You should really not have coffee drinks to "wet your palate". Coffee covers/dulls your taste receptors that is why coffee is drunk after having food.3. McCafe is actually ranked by any expert reviews about the same as Starbucks and other chains. Not great (obviously not freshly roasted like indie shops) not that bad.

@anon: thanks for pointing out that the coffee machine is a coffee roaster, that's really interesting indeed!

I also don't profess to be a coffee expert or drinker, which is why I didn't know about the palate thing too! What happened was that they did not even serve iced water before the sandwiches - it just felt really dry and the iced latte that came after that was much welcome.

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